German people are flocking to national email providers and demanding encryption services normally reserved for corporate security in the wake of the US spying scandal, German justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told journalists in Berlin on Wednesday (28 August).

German users have reacted to the NSA [the US National Security Agency] scandal by switching to German email providers and they are demanding encryption of their emails so far reserved to telecom companies. There is a great opportunity for private encryption, the minister said.

True but this is starting to gather steam... obama has damaged America's image so badly that the world no longer wants our products or trusts our companies because they know our government is out of control. They may have hated Bush because he made us America... tough but fair... but they hate obama even more because now we are a cross between the old soviet union and iran.

I can’t disagree with you at all but obama has damaged business and government to government cooperation. We must live in this world and have relationships in it... obama has severely damaged our ability to do so.

Unbelievable what this assclown and his party has done to us in such a short time.

I find it even more unbelievable that the Repubs have just sat back and pretended it it isn't there. nobama must have some powerful blackmail info on them. I can't imagine any other reason for their lack of action.

Are you pissed off enough yet?

12
posted on 08/29/2013 5:26:24 AM PDT
by upchuck
(The nobama regime: a string of omnishambles that stretches, seemingly, to infinity.)

The movement toward encryption in all of our dealings needs to gain steam. The NSA, despite its size, still have finite resources. There’s no way they can devote processing cycles to decryption if the bulk of traffic they intercept is encrypted.

I’ve had numerous arguments with FReepers on this, but if you truly want to stop this leviathan, start encrypting EVERYTHING YOU DO ONLINE! They’ve come out and very publicly stated that a majority of the data they harvest is from insecure websites (i.e. not using HTTPS). We need to rally JimRob to get SSL running for FR. Everything we do on this site is wide open, and I’d bet the NSA scoops up every word we say as it’s posted.

Oh, and hi there Uncle Andrew in the NSA’s web surveillance department in Quantico. How’s Aunt Sam and cousin Beth?

13
posted on 08/29/2013 5:29:39 AM PDT
by rarestia
(It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)

And like normal, the portrayal and the reality separate themselves again. The claim that people are moving to German email providers is just that, a claim by a politician.

I went and looked up our list of customers in Germany. The vast majority (likely close to 90%) have .de addresses. Most popular is t-online.de, followed by dmx.de, web.de. On the less than 5% side, yahoo.de and the top .com, aol.com.

This is an address list that goes back five years and 98% are prior to the whole Snowden revelation. Germans have always had the highest affinity for .de email addresses. They’re not switching ‘back’ to these addresses, they had them from the beginning.

This isn’t to say that e-mail providers aren’t having a heyday with this; DMX, web.de and t-online.de are using encrypted links between data centers now, and have assured the German public that all e-mail is being served from German data centers. These steps took place near the start of the month.

But the impression given that somehow there is a vast migration from US e-mail providers to German is, like most things from a politician, false.

15
posted on 08/29/2013 5:58:40 AM PDT
by kingu
(Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)

The WWII card has no place here. WWII does not mean we can be the A##holes of the world nearly 70 years later. We are illegally intercepting every single digital act of the American people and spreading Islam.
And although it is not illegal to spy on foreigners per se, it’s unjustified to use the battles of WWII to justify intercepting every single email of every normal German person. We collect more than the Stasi ever dreamed of.

Sane people here and there will be moving to email systems that offer them a way to hide their discussions from the government.

16
posted on 08/29/2013 6:12:00 AM PDT
by DesertRhino
(I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but communists just ran for office.)

I agree. What I meant to say was that it is mind boggling how they are doing it with very little complaining from the republicans... heck many of the republicans have openly supported them. That too is not unexpected either. Sad shape we are in.

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